Leon Trotsky (1879–1940,) alias of Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Jewish agitator, journalist, and Marxist revolutionary. He was a principal leader in the founding of the Soviet Union. Following the death of Lenin, Trotsky fell out with Stalin, exiled, and erased from Soviet accounts of the civil war and the formation of the Red Army.
Born in Yelisavetgrad (now Kropyvnytskyi in Ukraine,) the son of a farmer, Trotsky was educated at a local Jewish school before attending schools in Odessa and Nikolaev. A Marxist revolutionary from 1897, he headed the workers’ soviet (revolutionary council) in St Petersburg in the Russian Revolution of 1905. He played a significant role in Russia’s October Revolution in 1917, which brought the Bolsheviks to power. As later commissar of foreign affairs and war in the Soviet Union (1917–24,) he organized the Red Army and defeated the White Russian forces in the Russian Civil War.
In the struggle for power following Vladimir Lenin‘s death in 1924, Joseph Stalin emerged as the eventual victor. Even though Lenin, in his last testament, favored Trotsky over Stalin and even had recommended removing Stalin from power, Trotsky proved no match for Stalin. Stalin not only controlled a variety of organizations but also cleverly appealed to the class interest of the new bureaucratic elite. He firmly asserted his claim to Lenin’s mantle at his funeral, which Trotsky did not bother to attend.
Trotsky was removed from all positions of power, expelled from the party in 1927, and exiled in 1929. He remained the leader of an anti-Stalinist opposition. After settling in Mexico in 1937, he was murdered three years later by a Stalinist agent.
Trotsky was a diligent worker, a stirring public speaker, a messianic visionary, and a decisive administrator, but he was a successful leader of men. Despite his intellectual brilliance, he subordinated himself to Lenin’s leadership in 1917 and fatally compromised his political future. Historians contemplate how the Soviet establishment and its political and socio-economic policies would have been substantially different if Trotsky had succeeded Lenin.
Trotsky’s publications include History of the Russian Revolution (1932,) The Revolution Betrayed (1937,) Stalin (1948,) and Diary in Exile (1935.) Trotsky remains influential in Western Marxist circles.
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Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation.
—Leon Trotsky
Topics: Power
The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.
—Leon Trotsky
Topics: Corruption
Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.
—Leon Trotsky
Topics: Learning
Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a maneuver, a blow with an agreement.
—Leon Trotsky
Topics: Power
Under all conditions, well-organized violence seems to him the shortest distance between two points.
—Leon Trotsky
Topics: Violence
Life is not an easy matter. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.
—Leon Trotsky
Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.
—Leon Trotsky
Topics: Ideas
Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.
—Leon Trotsky
Topics: Talent
Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.
—Leon Trotsky
Topics: Revolution
Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.
—Leon Trotsky
Topics: Aging, Old Age, Age
In inner-party politics, these methods lead, as we shall yet see, to this: the party organization substitutes itself for the party, the central committee substitutes itself for the organization, and, finally, a “dictator” substitutes himself for the central committee.
—Leon Trotsky
There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.
—Leon Trotsky
Topics: Democracy
Revolutions are always verbose.
—Leon Trotsky
Topics: Revolution
If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.
—Leon Trotsky
Topics: Planning
Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler; his body will become more harmonious, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise.
—Leon Trotsky
Topics: Communism
The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces — in nature, in society, in man himself.
—Leon Trotsky
Topics: Evolution
The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.
—Leon Trotsky
Topics: Character
You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on — into the dustbin of history!
—Leon Trotsky
Topics: Politics
In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.
—Leon Trotsky
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